


Carry Me

by jestbee



Series: Fic Every Day in June 2018 [10]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Carry On by Rainbow Rowell - Freeform, Crossover, Enemies to Lovers, Fantasy, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Kissing, M/M, Magic, Pining, Wizard School, Wizards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 02:28:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15063032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee
Summary: He's not obsessed. It really doesn't matter what Louise says."You're looking again.""At what?""Your roommate."Phil isn't looking. He's checking."Pass the butter," is what he says instead."You have butter.""I need more butter."---A Crossover fic with Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. Dan as Baz and Phil as Simon.





	Carry Me

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for so long. M gdrive doc says I started it on 10th January this year, the day after my 30th birthday. I read the book when my power was out and I needed something to do that wasn't internet-based and meant I could stay inside a blanket. I read it in one sitting. 
> 
> I picked up writing this again because I've been reading a lot of Drarry and Drarry makes me think of Snowbaz. And dnp, it seems.
> 
> I don't know how much sense this will make if you haven't read the book, but give it a go anyway. 
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr](http://agingphangirl.tumblr.com) and maybe reblog the fic if you enjoyed it.

**Phil**

He's not obsessed. It really doesn't matter what Louise says.

"You're looking again."

"At what?"

"Your roommate."

Phil isn't looking. He's checking.

"Pass the butter," is what he says instead.

"You have butter."

"I need more butter."

 

**Dan**

Lester is definitely staring at him again. He can feel his eyes from across the room which is just too much. For many reasons.

He has to find a way to slip out but he doesn't know how he's going to swing it if Lester keeps this close of an eye on him. **Nothing to see here** will only take him so far.

Honestly, pushing him down the stairs hadn't been worth it.

Lester is scarfing down the cherry scones like they're his only source of food, like he won't be eating dinner in a few hours. Dan rolls his eyes even though Lester can't possible see him do it from this distance. Dan stays away from afternoon tea, it's not like he needs it anyway. He can go much longer than the time between lunch and dinner to wait for actual food.

For the other thing, he'll have to find a way to sneak out.

 

**Phil**

Phil loses sight of him around last period but finds him again at dinner.

"Really Phil," Louise says by his elbow.

Phil tucks into his roast beef and tries to ignore her.

She follows after him once they've finished eating, when he's busy following Dan across the dining hall, trying to keep up.

"You can't come up to the room," he says.

"I can," Louise insists.

"No Lou, pixie or not you're going to have to go back to your room."

Louise pulls a face like he's being desperately unfair.

"Fine. Promise me you aren't going to confront your possibly vampire roommate."

Phil doesn't answer.

"Phil…"

"I'm not going to confront him."

Louse cocks her head and gives him a little appraising look. She can always see more than he wants her to and Phil isn't sure if that's a magic thing or just a Louise thing. Either way, it's something he can't do.

"What are you going to do then?"

"I'm going to catch him."

 

**Dan**

Losing Lester after dinner is harder than he thinks it's going to be and for a split second he thinks that Pentland means to follow him up to Mummers House and then he'd have two of them to give the slip.

Not that it's hard.

Honestly, for the Chosen One, Phil Lester is such an idiot.

He'll wait until they've finished their normal routine.

Dan will bitch about the open window, Phil will remind him of the Anathema when Dan inevitably tries to cause him some damage and then Phil will take a shower and put on his school regulation pyjamas before curling into a tight ball in the middle of his bed. Like he's forgotten he's not in some group home any more. Like he's forgotten that there's only Dan there, in their shared room, right at the top of a tower. Alone.

The only advantage to sharing a room with your sworn enemy is getting to understand all of their habits in minute detail. For strategic purposes. Obviously.

Then Dan will lay in the dark and listen to the sound of his breaths even out. That's when he'll make his move.

Okay. Well maybe he'll let himself look, just for a moment. To see Lester's profile in the darkness, let his keener eyesight cut through it and see him in vivid detail. The curve of his cheekbone, the way his hair falls softly on to his forehead. The pink in his lips. He imagines how warm they'd be.

That's when he'll leave. When he can't take it anymore.

 

**Phil**

It takes longer than he thought it would for Dan to make a move after Phil pretends to sleep. He's probably checking he's really out before going but all to soon, sure enough, Dan is slipping out of the door and Phil is springing from the bed and following after him.

Good job they never change in front of each other or Phil never would have been able to keep a t-shirt on under his PJs.

He feels kind of weird not wearing his uniform when he leaves his room but it's all in aid of a good cause. Tonight he's going to catch Dan Howell in the act and then he'll finally had indisputable proof that he's a vampire. What he does with that information he hasn't decided yet.

He catches sight of Dan again, prowling across the Watford grounds in all black looking like the very spectre of the thing Phil suspects him to be. Really, if he is a vampire after all this they're going to have to have a serious chat about clichés.

The Wavering Wood rustles in the breeze behind him and Phil shoots it a bit of an angry look.

He hates the Wavering Wood.

Across the courtyard, over to the white chapel and then down into the catacombs. It's dusty and dank down here and Phil can barely see but there's really only one direction he can go at the mouth of it, down a cramped stone tunnel that gets darker and darker before opening out on to a wider cavern. There are tombs lining the walls and then tunnels splitting off in all directions.

There's a few flaming torches lit, kept alight by **Relight my fire** he presumes, so that they never go out. Still, the whole room is bathed in a kind of flickering glow rather than a steady light and if Phil hadn't already fought off a dragon and the Humdrum in previous years he might actually be scared or something.

He hears Dan's footsteps going down one of the tunnels and thinks he'll probably wait for him to finish. As much as he wants to catch him in the act, the actual thought of Dan bent over something small and rodent like and sinking fangs into it seems like something he'd want to keep private. Not that he needs to stand on ceremony for Dan Howell of all people. But still, people should have something that's just theirs, right?

All he needs to do is wait, and then he'll catch Dan Howell in the act.

 

**Dan**

Lester is an idiot. He's finished what he needs do down in the crypt and he'd heard Lester arrive about ten minutes ago. He isn't subtle and besides, Dan's hearing is better than most people's. Not that it needs to be with how Lester is bumbling about.

Dan could kill him right now. They're both out of bed, and the Anathema won't cover them here. No one knows where they are so Dan could kill him off right now and it would be ages before anyone found him. Lester is an idiot.

So much so that it isn't really sporting, is it?

"What are you doing here, Lester?" Dan says, walking dramatically out of the shadows.

He has to be dramatic, appearing like that with his pale skin and black clothes. It's what Lester expects, and he's never been one to disappoint.

"Dunno," Lester says. "Thought I might catch you."

"And what are you supposed to be catching me doing?"

Lester makes to move towards him but there's a patch of uneven ground and of course he trips over his own feet. He doesn't fall, but he does stumble a bit, all long limbs and awkward angles.

He's the _Chosen One_ for crowley's sake, and a moron.

"You're a mess," Dan says.

He is a mess, but his face is also flushed with a small amount of embarrassment and Dan hates how much he likes it, that little show of how alive he is.

"And you're a vampire" Lester counters.

"You're not doing a very good job of proving that though, are you?" Dan says, "waiting out here."

Maybe he's trying to provoke him, he can't really be sure of his own motivations but he does know that when Lester's face gets all animated and his eyebrows frown a bit he feels a bit sad about how all of this has to end. You know, eventually.

"I wanted to give you some privacy," Lester says.

He's got a speckling of freckles all over his face, a really prominent on on his cheek that twitches as he smiles. He's like a walking contradiction really, coming here to catch Dan in the act of killing something and then giving him the privacy to do it.

"You're an idiot," Dan tells him.

"Probably," Lester says, shrugging.

He's always shrugging.

It really bugs Dan how much he thinks about kissing him. Like when he's griping about whether the window should stay open or closed in their room, or shoving food in his face in the dining hall, or just, you know, breathing. Dan wants to kiss him.

"What?" Lester says.

"Nothing."

"You look hungry. You planning to bite me, then?" Lester tugs on the bottom hem of his shirt.

"Hardly seems worth the effort honestly," Dan says.

"It would prove my point though."

"Far be it for me to disprove your point when you're trying to turn me in," Dan says, rolling his eyes.

Lester bites his lip, shaking his head a bit. "That's not..."

He sighs, and it echoes slightly around the cavernous room, bouncing off the stone walls and repeating back at them. Dan can hear the thud-thump of his heartbeat. It's distracting.

"I wouldn't... I don't want to turn you in."

"Then..."

Dan needs to keep a certain level of skepticism at this point. For all he knows this could be part of the plan Lester has cooked up with his stupid friend Pentland, to follow Dan down here and-- what? _Nice_ him into confessing?

"I just wanted to know," Lester says, his jovial shoulders raising and then dropping.

Fucking shrugging.

It's not that simple, Dan thinks, it's not something he can just _tell_ people. Especially not his infuriating roommate who also happens to be the bloody Chosen One.

"Why?"

Lester redjusts his feet, ending up standing exactly as he was before only now he's a touch closer.

"I dunno," he says, and he sound far more sincere than Dan would like.

"Well sorry to disappoint," Dan says, taking a step around him.

Lester reaches out, his hand landing in the centre of Dan's chest to stop him.

"Get off," Dan says through gritted teeth.

"Just… no. Wait."

"What for?"

 

**Phil**

Phil doesn't know what he's doing. He knows Dan's chest feels cool and solid under his hand, he knows he doesn't want Dan to leave, that he wants him to stay here, but he doesn't know why or how.

"I…" is all he manages.

He's come here to find something out, to resolve this strange fixation he has on his roommate. And Dan has as good as admitted that he is what Phil thinks he is, so why doesn't that settle this insane itch he's feels under his skin? Why does he still feel like something is unresolved.

"Unless you're going to go off and explode magic everywhere at me Lester, you're going to need to let me leave now."

Phil isn't keeping him here, not really. All he has is a single hand on his chest, fingers splayed out against the soft of his shirt, the cold of the skin beneath seeping through. Or maybe is the chill of the room. There isn't a heartbeat beneath his palm but he can feel a subtle rise and fall of Dan's chest.

Perhaps it's just for show, maybe everything is for show. Maybe Dan is actually much more dangerous than he makes out and Phil has been fooled just like Dan wanted him to be. Or hypnotized. That would account for the draw he feels towards him all the time.

"For God's sake," Phil says, "Just… stay."

"Why?" Dan says again. "I keep asking and you keep not giving me a good enough reason. Are you completely stupid, Lester? Why on earth would I stay here if you don't even know what's--"

Phil cuts him off, curling a hand in the front of Dan's shirt and pulling him roughly towards him, slamming their mouths together.

He just wants Dan it shut up, that's all. And maybe kissing him hadn't been the most logical solution but that's that he's doing.

Dan is kind of stunned into stillness at first. Phil swallows down the end of his sentence, the sound getting lost behind his teeth, but then slowly, Dan is kissing him back.

Phil keeps the hand fisted in the front of his shirt but lifts his other one to curve around Dan's cheekbone. Dan's mouth is as cool to the touch as the rest of his skin, but his lips move with precise movements against Phil's as if he's scared Phil is going to run away.

Phil pushes, just a little bit, and Dan stumbles backwards, going easily as Phil manoeuvres him against the nearby stone wall.

There are divots in the rock. It can't be comfortable, and a lamp flickers overhead, the flame hot on Phil's ear. Dan growls.

His hands come up, pushing at Phil's chest until their mouths part and for a moment and Phil is knocked off kilter. They part, and Phil stammers, trying to come up with something to say.

"Dan… I…"

Dan growls again. It's animalistic, rough and rumbling in his throat. It doesn't sound human.

Phil is almost scared for a second, especially when Dan's hand reaches forward in the direction of his throat. But instead of choking him, Dan's fingers curl around the cross Phil wears and yanks it roughly off his neck, throwing it down on the ground a few feet away,

Dan casts a **put out the light**  and the torches around them flicker and then go out.

Phil stands in the pitch black, the sound of his own breathing filling the space between him and Dan. He can feel magic swirling in him, rising to the beat of his own heartbeat. Dan could kill him, right here, right now, Phil could die.

But at least he'll die knowing what it was like to kiss Dan Howell.

Phil takes a breath, and Dan pounces.

 

**Dan**

Lester had caught him off guard. It was mildly disconcerting that he'd managed it. Dan was comforted by the knowledge that he had seen Lester move, and would have been able to stop him easily if the daft git had actually attacked, but he hadn't been prepared for _kissing_.

Once their lips had connected Dan had a brief moment of panic, and pain, as the cross around Lester's neck buzzed into his bones.

There was almost too much sensation, the threat of the cross, the heat of the lamp threatening to consume him, the rough wall at his back and the soft warm press of Lester's lips.

He had to stop. It hurt and it was wonderful. He was going to die and he didn't care.

Before he knew what he was doing he was pushing Lester away and for a moment he thought maybe he'd regained his sanity and had the strength to put an end to this. His hand was at Lester's throat reaching out and away as if it didn't belong to him and the skin of his palm scorched at the press of the cross as he flung it across the dank space. He extinguished the flames, hot and searing down his side, and then he was back on him.

When they kiss for the second time Dan has the realisation that even though he'd gotten rid of the threats, while the cross is no longer throwing up resistance and there is no dangerous heat near his head, he still feels as if he is going to die. It's still all too much.

This is Lester. The bloody Chosen One and infuriating git he shares a room with. This is _Phil_. Who he's watched sleep, argued with, wanted from afar for so long.

He hates him and he loves him in equal measure and having him so close is making him shake far more than the ruddy cross ever could.

 

**Phil**

Dan is shivering in his arms. Somehow, he's got his wrists slung around Dan's neck and he's pressed flush against the length of him chest to hip. They're so intertwined that he can feel when Dan's whole body shakes against him.

"Hey," Phil says, pulling away from him. "Are you okay?"

He thinks Dan chases his mouth, rocking forward onto the balls of his feet before catching himself, reacquainting his pink, flushed lips with the sneer he usually has.

"What? What the hell are you going on about?"

"Well..." Phil thinks its best not to ask about the shivering and instead focus on the more pressing matter of the situation. The big thing. "You were kissing me."

"Er," Dan corrects, "I think you'll find you kissed me."

Well, that's true. He really didn't know what came over him, but he did know he wanted to do it again. Soon. Now, preferably.

"Yeah, I did."

Dan must have been expecting a fight, but at Phil's easy confession his eyebrows shoot up his face and the wrinkle in his nose smooths out.

"Well..." Dan seems to debate something in his head, hands fidgeting at his shirt.

Do vampires fidget? Phil had always imagined them to be in perfect control of themselves at all times. Dan certainly has seemed to be in the time that he's known him, but here he is the pink of his lips fading now that Phil is no longer kissing them and nervously moving his fingers over the folded hem of his shirt over and over again.

"Why?" Dan asks, finally.

"Why do I do anything?" Phil asks.

"Fuck knows," Dan says, and Phil could swear there's the hint of a smile.

Phil just shrugs. Standing near the wall, still gripping the bottom of his shirt, Dan looks mildly annoyed by that.

"I don't know," he says to back up the movement of his shoulders. "I felt like it."

Phil doesn't know if that's true. He really had only been thinking of shutting Dan up, but once it happened he really did like it. He does like it.

He never expected to.

"And you just do whatever you feel like all the time?" Dan says, that haughty tone back in his voice that Phil is so used to. "The Chosen One, the Mage's pet student gets to do whatever he wants and screw the rest of us if we try to object?"

Phil sighs. Suddenly the flutter of pleasure he'd gotten kissing Dan has faded to a low rumble of annoyance once again. This, he's used to. This, he knows how to handle.

"Okay, first of all," Phil says, "I don't do whatever I want. A dragon attacks, I kill it. The Humdrum threatens everyone once again and I somehow get put in the firing line. I don't choose to... I might be the Chosen One but I didn't choose to be it."

Dan barks out a laugh. "Right."

"How would you like it?" Phil says, "If someone went around saying you were the Chosen One and that meant you had to fit to like… a set model of your life. If you knew you were destined to die…"

He doesn't know why he's saying all of this. He doesn't say this to _anyone_. Not even Louise.

Dan stares back at him and his eyes turn dark with anger.

 

**Dan**

"You think I don't know what that's like?"

Dan is furious. Lester has no fucking idea. None.

"Why would you?"

"Oh," Dan says. "I don't know… what is something in my life meant I had to fit a certain way? Like my father and his plans for me? Like the fact that I'm a fucking vampire? You think I don't know what it's like to know I'm going to die? Fucking try me."

Lester blinks. His mouth turns to a tiny 'O' shape and his eyebrows are so far up his forehead Dan thinks they might disappear into his hairline. His cheeks are tinted pink. He's so alive, so fucking alive.

Dan doesn't even want to think about the fact that he just admitted he's a vampire.

"I didn't…"

"Think?" Dan says, "Do you ever?"

"Dan…"

Dan rolls his eyes. He's had enough of this. Of Lester's pity and his soft eyes and the way they look darker than the blue-green-yellow he knows they are in this dim lighting. He's had enough of his freckles and the way his tongue sticks out into the corner of his mouth.

"Just, leave it."

"Dan…" Lester repeats.

"Lester, don't."

Lester shuffles forward, his feet making a scratch-slide sound on the stone floor. Dan doesn't want his pity, so he does the only thing he can think of, and kisses him again

 

 **Phil**  

He loses track of how long they kiss.

The room has dropped in temperature so that when he shivers in the circle of Dan's arms it isn't because of how good the kissing is. But, it is good. Terribly good. 

"You're getting cold," Dan says. 

He's leaning back away from Phil. Somehow they've switched positions and Phil's back is pressed against the stone. He doesn't know when that happened but he can't find it within himself to mind. 

"I'm alright," Phil insists, afraid that if they move from this spot, if they break whatever spell is over them right now, then all of this will end.

Maybe they'll go back to just Dan and Phil, bickering about an open window and trying not to kill each other every day.

He doesn't think he can do that.

"Come on," Dan says, shifting back.

Phil feels a chill down his front as Dan steps away and he shivers again. Dan is moving like this is nothing, like it's all just a bit of madness brought on by the crypts and maybe it is, but Phil doesn't want it to be.

"Dan…" he says, quiet, a mere whisper of breath that he knows Dan will be able to hear. "Stay."

"Lester…" 

Phil laughs, a short loud thing that jumps out of his throat. "For god's sake, Dan. After all of this don't you think we could be on first name terms at least? Please, god, that if nothing else." 

Dan bites his lip. The pink is already fading from them, only ever temporary on his pale skin. Phil aches to reach over and suck on them again, bring the blood back to the surface. 

"Phil…" 

And god if his name doesn't sound good in Dan's mouth.

"You're cold," Dan says. "Let's go back to our room."

Phil hops from one foot to the other, pushing off the wall where he has still been leaning and standing up straight. 

"I don't want to," he says.

"Why the hell not?"

"Because…"

"Because what?"

"Because you won't… we can't… Dan…"

Dan seems to cotton on, at least a little bit. He doesn't roll his eyes are look like he's thinking about how stupid Phil is, but the way he sets his jaw makes Phil think he's probably restraining himself from just that.

"You think I won't kiss you back in our room?" Dan asks.

"I… maybe."

Dan drops his voice low and deep. He tucks his chin in to his chest slightly, his eyes dipped so that he's looking up at Phil through his lashes.

"Phil…" he says, a smooth rumble of sound like silk sliding over polished wood. "I've wanted to kiss you in our room before. In the cafeteria. Fuck, I'd kiss you in the middle of class in the front of all of Watford if given the chance. I pretty much always want to kiss you."

Shit. That's… a lot. Phil can't think of a thing to say in repose because what do you say when someone says something like that? That they want you, have always wanted you.

He pauses, a deer in headlights, and waits for Dan to say something else, anything else

 

**Dan**

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, why the hell had he said all of that?

So what if it's true, so what if he has been pining after Phil sodding Lester for several years, why the hell would he announce that to him?

Something about the crypts and the dark and the cold stone walls. Something here, like magic, feels heavy and inevitable. It's done something to his brain.

Or maybe that was the kissing. Whatever it is, he's all rattled up, a thrum of magic and kissing and _something_  swirling together in the air all around them.

"I…" Phil says, eventually, "wow."

"Yeah," Dan nods, all self-deprecating and sarcastic, "surprise. Your roommate is gay and pretty much… wanting you. All the time. Sorry if that's--"

"No," Phil says, hurriedly. He seems to reach out for Dan, his hand shifting for only a second before dropping back to his side, but Dan sees it. He sees everything even in the half light. "I… well, I don't mind."

"You don't _mind_?"

"No?" Phil's eyes twitch, blinking a couple of times before narrowing a little in thought. Admonishment, possibly. "I mean… I can't… I haven't thought about it. Before now. Not really… I mean I was too busy being irritated by you to think about kissing you. But…"

"But?" Dan asks, wondering what possible positive Phil could have found in all of this.

"But, well I think that when I came down here… I think I wanted to know about the whole vampire thing because… well because I wanted to _know_  you. I'm, uh, a little bit obsessed with you too."

"I didn't say obsessed," Dan says.

"Dan."

"Fine." He tuts. Let Phil think he's obsessed if that suits him. Whatever. "That's, er, good. Then. That you… I mean, you never thought about kissing me before so it's kind of awkward that we just…"

"No," Phil shakes his head, moving forward now. He does reach out this time, wrapping his warm, warm hand around Dan's fingers and tugging on his arm. Dan doesn't go quietly but he does allow Phil to hold his hand. "I didn't think about it before but I am thinking about it _now_. I'm probably going to always be thinking about it."

Dan sighs. He can feel Phil edging closer to him. And fuck, since when was he _Phil_?

This is completely insane, but he doesn't fight it as Phil leans in and brushes their lips together again.

He makes a muffled humming noise against Phil's mouth as his tongue slips in past his lips to slide against Dan's. He could stay here forever, he could keep this going on and on getting everything he wants down here in the dark with the magic and the _something_. But he won't.

"Come on," Dan says during a natural pause. He puts a hand flat to Phil's chest, right against his heartbeat, feels it thudding steadily under his palm. "Let's go back."

Phil pauses, then nods. He still looks disappointed, a bit, hesitant like he thinks all of the magic might drain away if they leave. Dan half thinks it will too but if it does at least they'll know, staying down here is just delaying the inevitable.

They make their way out, back into the moonlit grounds, rolling grass and Mummer's House standing on the horizon. He feels the night air wash over them both as they ascend and his hand is still gripped in Phil's grasp.

The magic doesn't leave. He still feels a little giddy with it, dizzy with magic and nighttime and _Phil_.

"I'll still kiss you when we get back," Dan says, like a promise.

Phil sighs, his breath misting in the cold air. "Alright."

Dan does kiss him when they get back. He pushes Phil back onto his own bed and climbs snake-like into his lap. Phil's heartbeat picks up and his breath comes hot and heavy as Dan's closes the distance between them.

It's dangerous and thrilling. Phil is the Chosen One, destined to save the world and maybe to die. Dan might die too. Maybe they're both destined for nasty ends, and maybe they will be the one to kill each other in the end, but it doesn't matter.

What matters is the slow slide of Phil's hand under his shirt, the way Dan can finally press his lips to the freckle on his cheek and run a hand through the soft strands of his hair.

The rest, all that seems weighty and inevitable, that can wait

 

**Phil**

"You're staring again," says Louise over breakfast.

Phil is eating his toast, slathered in jam and butter. It's dripping down his arm but he isn't really paying attention.

He can still feel all the places Dan's hands were last night, and he can't help the smile spreading wide on his mouth as the soft gaze of Dan's eyes meeting Phil's from across the room.

He thinks if Dan could blush he might. He bites his lip and ducks his head just a little as he looks over. His expression says he too is reliving it all in vivid detail. The way his eyes stay heavy and dark and trained on Phil's is a promise, that it will happen again. Over and over, for as long as they want it to.

Maybe he's always felt this way about Dan, or maybe it's completely new, a rush born out of something heady down in the crypts. Either way, he feels the sharp, dizzy thrill of it and he doesn't want to stop.

"Yeah," he says to Louise, making her lips purse and disappointment flood her features, "I am."


End file.
